Hunted Earth - The Ring Of Charon Part 31

Raphael looked at Larry and felt fear sweat suddenly popping out of his forehead. "Suppose it's not the Earth they want-but the Solar System?"

Raphael asked.

The Nenya roared through the darkness, accelerating toward Pluto, many dark days ahead.

Gerald MacDougal bustled into the crowded wardroom of the Terra Nova and looked around. A dozen conversations were starting up between people who had never met before. Like lunchtime on the first day of school, he thought. A roomful of new people, a sense of things beginning, a chance for new adventure.

As he made his way through the line for his morning tea, he heard bits and s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation. There was only one topic this day: the Saint Anthony, bearing news from the Solar System.

And of Marcia. His wife's name on so many of the reports filled him with a special pride, and relief.

He might well never see her again, though he was by no means resigned to that. At least he knew she was alive and kicking.

And she-they, all of them-had seen the enemy.

Here Earth was, in the heart of the enemy's empire, and none of them had gotten within a hundredthousand kilometers of a Charonian of any sort.

He took his tea to an empty table, sat down and thought.

The Charonians, the aliens, had not offered up a single clue to their own nature, even as they flaunted their power with arrogant confidence, both here in the Multisystem, and back home. Time after time, in endless ways, they had demonstrated that they had no fear of humanity, and perhaps humans were quite literally beneath their notice. Perhaps beings that hunted planets paid life no mind, any more than a man who captured lions would even think to consider the lion's fleas.

Except that Earth, and Earth's life, was so well cared for. It occurred to Gerald that humanity, no, human technology, was the only thing harmed by the move to the Multisystem. Scarcely any nonsentient species would even notice the change.

Solar constant, axial tilt, the tides, even-to a very close approximation-the length of the year, all had been duplicated. Satellites, s.p.a.cecraft, communication and trade were all that suffered.

Life, then, was important to the Charonians, and they made great effort to protect it.

It was intelligent life they held in such contempt that they could ignore it.

A chill ran through his soul, and he whispered a silent prayer.

But that thought, of intelligent life, had set something tickling at his memory. Something he sensed was of great importance. Marcia. Yes, she was part of it. Somewhere, back in the past.

Something in graduate school, back on the Moon that no longer hung in Earth's sky.

Gerald leaned back in his chair and looked at the crowd, wondering what possible reason there could be for thinking of such things at a time like this.

But he ignored that voice of doubt, and let hismind journey where it might. His subconscious was trying to tell him something, remind him of some bit of knowledge that was not recorded on a datablock. A clue hidden in his own memory. The train of thought was delicate and elusive. If he struggled too hard to understand it, he might destroy it altogether. He let it drift and carry him where it might. School. The wardroom had reminded him of school days. A lecture, and Marcia had been sitting next to him, because he remembered talking with her about it. An idea that had excited him.

Which of his cla.s.ses had it been? No, wait a second. He had been sitting in on her cla.s.s. An engineering cla.s.s, some wild theory the professor was spinning one day when she had covered all the planned material early.

But what was it?

Some wild idea in s.p.a.ce construction. Von something.

Gerald sat bolt upright, and nearly sent himself sprawling in zero gee. Von Neumann. That was it.

Gerald's blood ran cold. Von Neumann machines. A dozen pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and it was suddenly all clear to him.

Horrifyingly clear.

They would need the answer back in the Solar System, and back on Earth. And now, fast, before that CORE could get any nearer to the Saint Anthony.

He scrambled out of his seat and headed for the comm center. It all made sense. He knew that he had got it right. But even so, he was more than half-hoping he had gotten it wrong.

? ? ?Sondra Berghoff mumbled something in her sleep and turned over, so that her arm flopped over the edge of the cot. Marcia MacDougal, standing at the door, looked in and smiled.

Marcia herself had been working more hours than she should have, out at the Landing Zone One observation camp, trying to pull in just a few more facts. She was more than a bit tempted to take up residence on the couch in the opposite corner for a few hours. But not yet. Not quite yet. There was so much to know about the Charonians. Marcia was still tempted by the hope-or perhaps the illusion-that one more hour of study, of thought, would be rewarded with the big answer. No one had yet been able to pull it all together, put all the pieces in one jigsaw puzzle. Marcia MacDougal wanted to be the one who did.

Marcia and Sondra had taken over a research room at the library of Port Viking, determined to sift through the mountains of data dug up in the Solar System and on Earth. Unfortunately for Marcia's sense of order, Sondra had gotten there first.

Datablocks littered the floor. Printouts were stacked up everywhere. A playback unit was blaring out some bombastic piece of cla.s.sical music Marcia did not recognize. Video images taken by Earthside astronomers and relayed by the Saint Anthony were up on half the screens. The other half showed images from various datataps placed on the invaders, from the lowliest of carrier bugs and scorpions up to the Lunar Wheel itself.

The datataps, d.a.m.n them, were providing torrents of information. Unfortunately, none of it seemed to mean very much. Marcia guessed Sondra had staggered toward the cot after yet another marathon session, hoping that rest would bring the answer. If there could be an answer.Marcia was not at all unhappy that Sondra was working alongside her. But, just now, she was glad to be alone with her own thoughts for the moment.

Sondra seemed to need light and noise to work-and to sleep. Not Marcia. She punched b.u.t.tons on her console, shut down the music and most of the video screens. The room turned dark, quiet, full of shadows and silence. Marcia MacDougal liked things that way when she was working on a research problem.

Databanks, supercomputers, communications, reference service, comfortable chairs. No doubt about it: the facilities here were the best. Get a.s.signed to the asteroid-invader problem, and you could have anything you wanted from the frightened Martian government.

Everything except enough sleep.

Marcia got up from her desk, stretched, and stumbled toward the door. Maybe a splash of water on her face would wake her up.

She pushed the door of the study open and squinted as the bright light of the corridor struck her eyes. She made her way down the silent halls to the washroom and wasted precious Martian water in the effort to wake herself up. She toweled off her face and stepped back out into the hall.

She stepped over to a large, ceiling-to-floor window just past the entrance to the library. The city was quiet, and dark, and the dome was opacified, locking in as much of the day's warmth as possible to carry the city through the night.

Marcia was disappointed. She had wanted to see the stars.

The stars. Good G.o.d, that was where her husband was now. Gerald. Gerald, where are you ?

They had thought themselves tragically sundered with a paltry few hundred million kilometers between them. Now the distance between them was literally unmeasurable.What had that first signal said? She turned and walked back to the library. Marcia returned to her desk, shuffled through her papers, and found the first preliminary message from Earth. She studied it again, read the sad words. "Distance from Earth unknown... range estimated to be at a minimum of several hundred light years, with no upper limit."

The Earth could be on the other side of the Milky Way-or in another galaxy altogether. She read on.

"Perpetrators of Earth-theft unknown. Purpose of Earth-theft unknown..."

She dropped the paper and sighed. This Wolf Bernhardt was not an optimistic reporter, to put it mildly. Well, at least he got the facts down in a clear fashion, and that was what counted.

Earth had survived. The people of Earth were alive- or at least most of them were. That was the real message, and the happiest possible report that could have been sent. They should all be grateful that Earth survived intact.

But had Gerald survived? Marcia closed her eyes and crumpled up the message slip. It seemed likely, but she had no way of knowing. Nor was there anything she could do about it. It was all but certain that she would never see him again, never hear his voice or touch his hand. Perhaps, one day, there would be a message-but even if the Saint Anthony survived long enough to do such service, all the billions of people on Earth and in the Solar System would be struggling to send word through the probe. It would be a long line to wait in.

Besides, the probe might be destroyed at any moment by G.o.d only knew what. It might be a long time-or forever-before she could get or receive word.

Suddenly, a great feeling of peace settled over her. Gerald was all right. She found herself quite abruptly believing that, knowing it. Strange as it seemed, Earth was in very good hands, well cared for. Whoever had taken the planet had placed it in acarefully perfect orbit, reproduced its original tides and solar radiation to within three decimal places.

Marcia rubbed her tired eyes. Marcia had yet to rest since the first news from Earth had flashed across the Solar System. The first wave of hopeful excitement had faded long ago, to be replaced by utter bafflement. The new data from Earth merely confused the situation even more.

There was a noise from the other side of the room. Marcia looked up to see Sondra, rolling over in her sleep, caught inside a dream.

The screen dimmed, flared, cleared. Somehow Sondra was watching the display and in it at the same time, watching a readout of her own mind, watching the results of watching the readout, which were caused by the readout.

Feedback. Her mind echoed, shifted places, split into two. Now half of her was Charonian, a scorpion robot. But no, a real scorpion, grown huge, its stinging tail swiveling toward her as the monster stepped through the fun-house mirror that was all that remained of the video screen- Sondra groaned, raised her hands, rolled over-and fell off of the cot. Hitting the floor woke her, but just barely. She lay there, all but inert, for a long moment, before summoning the energy to move.

She looked up to see Marcia trying to hide a smile.

"Good morning, or evening, or whatever the h.e.l.l it is," Sondra said in a growly voice.

"Dead of night, I think," Marcia said.

Sondra got up carefully, trying to unwrap the sheet that had tangled itself around her legs, feelingdecidedly foolish. "Just like the bad old days in grad school," she said, mostly for the sake of something to say. "Pump the brain full of facts, stumble someplace to sleep, and then semi-reawaken to write the term paper. Should I go somewhere else to work?"

Marcia smiled. "No need. I'm stuck myself at the moment. You can't disturb thoughts that aren't happening. What have you got so far?"

Sondra smiled. Nice of Marcia to ask. But then Marcia was nice. Much nicer than Sondra would ever be-or would ever want to be. She went over to her own desk on the far side of the room, sat down at her terminal and picked up her notes. "Some extremely weird stuff," she said. "The exobiology labs came up with something big while you were out. Inside every one of the creatures they've examined, they've found not only Earth-type DNA, but at least three other incompatible, nonterres-trial genetic-coding systems. Which means the Charoni-ans' ancestors-or at least the ancestors of whoever engineered them-visited Earth and stole samples of DNA, and did the same on at least three other life-bearing worlds." Sondra looked up at Marcia. "That scary enough for you?"

"Oh, yes," Marcia said, clearly too stunned by the words to say anything more.

Sondra couldn't blame her for being unsettled. It was no happy thought to realize the Charonians had used Earth life as a genetic spare-parts bin.

Knowing they were in some way related to Earth life somehow only made them more... alien. "It confirms something else, too," Sondra said. "The living Charonian creatures are clearly every bit as artificial as their robots. As if the designers of the living creatures and mechanical devices didn't make any distinction between life-form and machine, and combined some elements of both types into everything they made. Which might explain why the scorpion robots look like scorpions.They're patterned after some form of terrestrial arthropod." She tossed her notes down. "That's the big news here. What's new from the field?" she asked.

"We're getting a lot better at reading the Charonians' minds," Marcia said, leaning back in her chair and propping her feet up. "I've spent the day pulling together a lot of data on the thought processes of the Charonians. The datataps are collecting more information than we'll ever use. And we're getting terrific stuff from the Lunar Wheel taps.

"Unfortunately, Charonian minds make for pretty dull reading," Marcia said dryly. "It's almost all concrete imagery, direct visualization with almost no capacity for abstract thought, or reasoning by deduction or induction. Their thoughts are highly repet.i.tive. A lot of what pa.s.ses for thought seems to be 'playback' of another creature's experiences."

Sondra frowned. "How does that work?"

"Say a scorpion robot comes across a rock in its path," Marcia said. "It first calls up the memory of a previous encounter with a rock, to see how it handled the problem before. It then adapts the old thought-image to the existing circ.u.mstance, and works out the best route around the rock it currently faces. Then it broadcasts the results, and whoever runs into the rock next already knows how to deal with it. They can run through the whole process very quickly. The whole cycle of obstacle encounter, image call-up, image modification, and then reaction only takes milliseconds. The key is that all the Charonians are constantly broadcasting their own experiences and picking up transmissions from all the other Charonians in the vicinity. One creature can send out a query, and then receive a solution to its problem. If they're working it right, they ought to be able to store and transfer memories from one generation to the next.

"The only other thing I've managed to confirm isso obvious it's barely worth mentioning," Marcia said. "The bigger they are, the smarter they are, without any relation to machine versus animal or any other variable. Not really a hot news flash, is it?

The carrier bugs are just drones," Marcia went on.

"They can only be programmed to fetch and carry.

The scorpion-level animals and robots are a bit more flexible. They're capable of receiving and handling more information, and of dealing with more varied situations-though not always successfully.

"The Lander creatures are smarter than the scorpion-level types-but not by so much as might be expected. I'd score them as being about as bright as c.o.c.ker spaniels. I a.s.sume the Lunar Wheel is far above the Landers in intellect. Sort of a thought chain instead of a food chain.

"But I've got a theory I haven't really proved yet.

Down on the lower levels, each creature or robot seems to receive its initial 'education' by means of a ma.s.sive data download from the next level up on the thought chain. I've got a great tape of a Lander 'teaching' a batch of new scorpions by downloading subsets of its own information to the scorps."

"Wait a second." Sondra stood up. There was an answer in there somewhere, a big one. "You've been out in the field looking at the Charonians on Mars, and I've been here looking at what the Wheel and the Sphere have been doing. We haven't put the two halves together." Even as she spoke, Sondra suddenly saw it. The answer was staring them all in their faces! She forced herself to move forward in an orderly fashion, making sure all the links of the logic chain were there. "Before I dozed off, I was watching a transmission from the Wheel to a Lander. It could be interpreted as the Wheel 'teaching' the Lander a subset of its information. So how far up does it go?"

Marcia nodded, her face betraying slowly mounting excitement. "So scorps teach bugs.Landers teach scorps. The Wheel teaches the Landers. But who teaches the Wheel?" she asked.

Sondra grinned in triumph. "Bingo." She was on the right track. That was the real question, the one all the others led towards. "It's got to be the Sphere, or whoever it is that runs the Sphere. They must be the ones who teach ent.i.ties on the level of the Wheel."

"Wait a second," Marcia said. "The reports from Earth show that the Moonpoint Ring thing orbiting Earth in the Multisystem is just like the Lunar Wheel inside the Moon in our system, except that the Earth's Moon-point Ring isn't buried inside a satellite. It had no need for camouflage. But if the Moonpoint Ring is new, it will need teaching. The Sphere could be doing a memory download to the Moonpoint Ring right now."

Sondra nodded eagerly. "I get it! If Earth could listen in, they might get some real answers. They'd hear from the real masters, the real Charonians who created all. these nightmares."

"Yes! My G.o.d, yes. We could tap right into their instructions to their machines." Marcia stood up, tried to think. They would have to transmit this idea to the Moon at once, have the Saint Anthony's controllers radio instructions to the probe through the wormhole.

Marcia glanced at the wall clock, trying to figure how much time was left before they lost the Anthony. Just under thirty-six hours. There was time to send the message, if they started now. She was about to say that to Sondra. But then the quakes started.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

The Ages of Life and DeathThe Sphere had sent its orders, and Sphere orders were something the Caller could not even conceive of resisting.

And the orders said that now was the time. The Caller ran a last check of all its far-scattered underlings. Not all, or even a majority, were ready for action. But many units were prepared, and the Sphere had placed the highest urgency on the Caller's task. Strange that a job that might take decades, or centuries, should have to be so rushed -but a century from now, the crisis would surely come, and survival might well depend on the hours, the minutes, the seconds saved now.

The Caller focused gravity beams of ma.s.sive power and fired them at the worlds. The beams of gravity were infinitely more powerful than the ones fired by the Ring of Charon-and no effort had been made to render these beams harmless.

Far from it.

The Caller sent the command coursing over the gravity beams to all the completed installations, all across this star system. Along with the commands, embedded in the very gravity beams that sent the orders, it sent power as well. The Worldeaters sucked it all in, eager for more.

On Mars, on Venus and Mercury, on the Jovian and Saturnian satellites, the Worldeaters began to earn their names. The Worldeaters took the beams, formed them into gravity fields that did what nature never intended. Around each amalgam of Worldeaters, in whatever shape they formed, the planetary crust began to tear itself open, to heave itself up into the air. The Worldeaters themselves, deeply anch.o.r.ed into the planetary subsurfaces, clung tight, held on.

All but a few. Even Worldeaters could fail, and die. On Mars one failed, and another on Mercury, the huge beings torn up from their moorings, flungup into the sky by their own gravity beams, tumbling insanely across the sky until they crashed and died.

But their fellows strove on, ripping down into the subsurface rock. The debris was pulled in toward the artificial gravity sources that hovered, like so many children's balloons, over every cl.u.s.ter of Worldeaters. Now fully energized, the gee sources grabbed violently at anything below them that was not strongly secured. But matter pulled in by the gee sources did not acc.u.mulate around them. Second-stage gravity beams, wrenchingly manipulated by the Worldeaters, threw the debris up, out, directly away from the planet, accelerating it at incredible rates.

Within minutes, from every rocky or icy world inside Saturn's...o...b..t, streams of pulverized planetary crust were fountaining up into s.p.a.ce.

The red stone of Mars, the ice of Ganymede, the acid-leached rock of Venus, and the Sun-scorched skin of Mercury were blasted up into free s.p.a.ce, arcing out into clouds of dust that rapidly enveloped the planets.

Huge vortices, hurricanes and tornadoes of fantastic size, roared up from the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn. The huge spin-storms stretched out from the gas giants, extending their reach far beyond the normal limits of the atmosphere, stretching themselves into bizarre tendrils of gas that arced and spiraled across the sky, releasing megatons of atmosphere into free orbit.

At Saturn, the gas jets slammed into the ring plane, disrupting orbits of the ring particles, knotting the gorgeous patterns of Saturn's diadem into chaos. The jets of atmospheric hydrogen and methane and complex hydrocarbons boiled up from inside the huge world to splash across s.p.a.ce.

All across the Solar System, the stuff of worlds was thrown into orbit. The s.p.a.ceside Worldeatersset to work, grabbing at the gas and dust and rubble, spreading gravity nets to gather it all up.

And it did not end. The jets, the rubble streams, the storms gathered force, tearing at the fabric of all the worlds. From Mercury to Saturn, the Worldeaters tore away, clawing the flesh from the planets.

The Solar System began to die.